Opinion Archive

What to Make of AMLO Post-2006

March 5, 2008

In recent days we have seen Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former leftist presidential candidate, return to the limelight by inserting himself as the defender of a statist PEMEX and the promoter of Alejandro Encinas to head his party, the PRD. The man Enrique Krauze called the “Tropical Messiah” has gone through several transformations. To understand his new role, we must analyze who he was in the years running up to the 2006 election, and his reaction to finding himself without formal power in its aftermath.

It was a simpler time

In 2003, López Obrador wore his best “statesman” clothes. He was riding a wave of popularity and he was using Mexico City’s budget to curry favor with the lower classes, via subsidies to the elderly, single mothers, and the handicapped, as well as the middle classes, via massive amounts of road construction. Gone were the days of protests that blocked oil facilities and brought mayhem to the streets of the capital when he led protestors all the way from his home state of Tabasco. His message was clear: AMLO the statesman was ready to lead all of Mexico.

Nevertheless, some worrying signs kept surfacing. Chief among them was the fact that the PRD majority in the local legislature kept efforts at government transparency at bay. Further, AMLO seemed not to “get it” when it came to Mexico’s desperate need to establish the Rule of Law. Responding to lynchings that had taken place on his watch, he implied that they didn’t bother him, saying that mob justice was part of a “deep” Mexico.

The scandals that surfaced regarding his former chief of staff, as well as the Las Vegas videos that showed his secretary of the Treasury gambling large sums of money, seem to have started the bunker mentality that would later dominate the inner circle. It became obvious that President Fox was obsessed with keeping his nemesis from winning the presidency. It became equally obvious that López Obrador’s charisma ran a tight ideological ship, but that his team lacked the executive and administrative skills needed to tie up the multiple loose ends which could be used against “the movement”.

2006 and all that

The energy and the dynamic of the presidential campaign, as well as the groupthink that dominated inner-circle decisionmaking, began to eat away at the self-control that had characterized “AMLO the statesman”. His certainty at beating an obscure former energy secretary from the PAN, and a very unpopular PRI “dinosaur”, gave free reign to his street-fighter instincts. He started ranting against the financial establishment and being disrespectful of the sitting President. This was his undoing: when the President and business leaders called him reckless, AMLO’s loose lips made sure that the epithet stuck. Further, he underestimated the profound changes that had expanded Mexico’s “middle class” via homeownership. These new stakeholders would have loved a monthly stipend of $700 pesos for their grandparents, but they weren’t willing to risk their mortgaged house to get it.

A house divided

The PRD was tragically unprepared for an AMLO loss. Thousands of people who were ready to take positions in a new regime were left in the cold (literally, in the middle of Reforma). In the absence of an AMLO presidency, Marcelo Ebrard, who was never really trusted by “true” perredistas because of his recent PRI past, held the party’s most powerful office. Psychologically, López Obrador was even less prepared than his party, blaming literally everyone but himself and creating a bizarre parallel “legitimate presidency”. He took refuge in the most radical elements of this society (the 13% that make up the disaffected urban lower-middle class) because they were the only ones who could channel his outrage.

Today, AMLO is trying to use the fact that he was responsible for the unheard-of electoral success of the party in Congress to impose Alejandro Encinas as party head. But the hatred he has inspired is generating a backlash even among thick-skinned party members. Curiously, two of the most important amlistas, Encinas himself and Ebrard, are much more pragmatic and institutional than they let on. But, in a show of how dysfuntional the relationship has become, they dare not show their “good” side.

Unfortunately for Mexico, “AMLO the statesman” is gone. What is left is a leader of insidious and destructive civil disobedience, but not an insurgent, which is why his threats of violence over PEMEX ring somewhat hollow. The hope is that if the repudiation of angry intolerance in the PRD is loud enough, the party can find the voice he so carelessly rejected. The one that recognizes that most Mexicans today actually do have something to lose. The one that seeks to lead the country, not divide it.

For the latest thought-provoking article by Agustin Barrios Gomez please go to our Opinion Column page

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